Play On
by hybridphoenix
Summary: Eames and Ariadne entertain the kids. Ariadne plays the piano; Arthur watches. Later, Arthur plays the piano; Eames watches. Inspired by "The Piano" by moviemaniac12. Slight A/E.
1. Ariadne plays the piano

Part 1: Ariadne plays the piano

Arthur's brows were furrowed so deeply they seemed to merge into one. He carved words savagely into the page, a futile attempt to drown out the excited screams of the children and the highly amused laughter of the childish.

Contrary to popular opinion, Arthur was not immune to human emotion. Under normal circumstances, he would have smiled fondly as Phillipa retold Snow White for the fiftieth time while Ariadne worked on her models, wondering if Cobb would consider this an early induction into their trade. Perhaps with a tinge of grudging admiration at James' squeals of laughter as Eames hoisted him into the air. While it was natural to expect a forger to have a way with people, Arthur could not help but admire the cheery wit that dissolved the awkwardness Arthur occasionally felt with the kids; Arthur prided himself on his dry wit, but even he knew that his style more often than not closed conversations, while Eames' had a way of getting people to open up.

Under those normal circumstances, Eames would give him the look that said "don't be such a stick in the mud and join us, dear", blue eyes bright with a welcoming smile. Arthur would find himself sigh and clear away his work before joining them, a small smile on his face.

But this was not a normal circumstance. Arthur was in the most critical stage of his research, where he needed to crystallize all the disparate elements he had gathered so far into a coherent, targeted structure for each of the other team members. And call him a stick in the mud, but this was careful, important work that required utmost focus and therefore necessitated absolute peace and quiet. Arthur made sure to concentrate all these thoughts into the poisonous glare he was shooting Eames.

They had been through this enough times for Eames to know what the glare meant. True to form, Eames dispelled the silence with a stage whisper directed at the children. Arthur did not catch what he said, but he could hear the kids' squeals of delight as they ran into another wing of the workhouse, and the rhythmic clip-clop of Ariadne's heels as she chased after them, yelling, "I never said yes, Eames!"

Arthur knew a reprieve when he saw it. His right hand scribbled a few additional points for Yusuf, who would arrive the next day, while his left hand clicked furiously from page to page.

"We're back on track," said Arthur, explaining the timeline of events to Cobb. "Yusuf's flight was delayed, but his supplies are coming in on schedule."

"Mmm." Cobb nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. "But what about-?" Cobb stopped, raising a quizzical eyebrow as the jubilant cries of "Yay, Ari!" reached them. Arthur shrugged as the rest of them piled in.

"But Eames, I haven't played in ages!" Ariadne was trying for frustrated, but given that this was Eames, Arthur pegged her real mood as semi-resigned.

"Better late than never!" Eames shot back brightly. "The kids will be very disappointed if you break your promise- am I right, Phillipa, James?"

"Yes! Pleeeease, Ari?" chorused the kids, by now totally in Eames' thrall.

"I never made that promise," Ariadne grumbled, sitting down in front of the piano. Arthur leaned back on the hind legs of his chair, an eyebrow raised in interest. The piano had remained untouched ever since they had moved into the warehouse, and he had come to believe that none of the others knew how to play the piano.

Ariadne shifted around on the piano and plunked a few chords experimentally, before clearing her throat awkwardly. "Okay, I guess I still remember this- it was my examination piece from long ago. Vals Poetico- Spanish composer, I suppose- it's a waltz, a sort of dance," she added for the benefit of the kids.

The workhouse was large, but the rich chords Ariadne played filled the space agreeably. The Romantic piece suited her character- it was light, lyrical, yet expressive at the same time- the Spanish harmonics providing a layer of depth to the singing melody in the right hand. While Arthur tended to be a stickler for smudged notes, he found himself ignoring the minor dissonances in this case. A fond smile touched his lips as Eames led Phillipa in an one-handed waltz, while waving at James with the other. He wondered if Eames had ever taken formal music or dance lessons, or if this was simply an extension of his effortless knowledge of people. Eames smirked - a "can't-take-your-eyes-off-me, darling?"- when he caught his eye; Arthur rolled his eyes and looked away, ignoring the slight warmth in the tip of his ears with practised ease.

Gaining confidence from that, Ariadne launched into the ever-popular Rondo Alla Turca by Mozart, the clear melodic line supported by a simple rhythm in the left hand. Arthur liked to think that induced dreams were Mozartian in nature- built out of simple constructs such as Penrose steps and circular mazes, yet allowing for almost infinite possibility. Arthur allowed himself to relax into the music, allowing his long fingers to travel on the side of his chair, as if on an imaginary keyboard.

"You play the piano, " Eames guessed, gesturing at Arthur's fingers.

"I like Mozart," Arthur replied, not keen on being the next performer. He thought it fitting that Ariadne was the one playing the piece, turning the deceptively simple theme into a piece of grandeur by adding broken chords on the left hand, then an octave layering with the right hand.

Eames took the chair next to Arthur. Both of them sipped their coffee in a surprisingly companionable silence as Ariadne played. The smile on Ariadne's face as she struck each key with sparkling clarity reminded Arthur that, at one time, she was a child performing to the applause of her parents. Arthur felt a twinge of guilt at that thought; her parents would hardly like to know that she was mixing around with a bunch of criminals.

"We've ruined her, haven't we?" Eames smirked, guessing Arthur's thoughts. "She's never going to be a regular architect now."

To his surprise, Arthur's heart lifted at the comment. He remembered the first time he'd tried lucid dreaming, the visceral thrill of building a world that was truly one's own. Arthur put the guilt aside as they all sang "Do, A Deer" with the kids, with Eames' deep voice sounding in the bass register. Definitely not classically trained- Arthur could hear a casualness in his tone in place of the full-throated vigour professional singers utilize- but Eames was carrying it off- as he did everything else- with sheer confidence and force of personality.

If you had been in the workhouse late that night, when Arthur was packing up after the rest of the team had left, you would have been forgiven for thinking that the place was haunted. Either that, or it would have to be true that Arthur was humming snatches of half-remembered tunes, a smile on his face.


	2. Arthur plays the piano

Part 2: Arthur plays the piano

If he hadn't been in this line of work, Eames would have diagnosed his current condition as insomnia. Technically speaking, though, he had been getting lots of sleep, albeit Somnacin-style. He'd been practising his role as the mark's nephew. Eames could reproduce the laid-back dress style and excited gestures of the geeky inventor, but not the tone. Eames knew what the feeling meant: there was some aspect of the nephew's character that he had yet to intuit. He found himself jerking awake every two hours or so as the thoughts had churned in his head, waking him up every couple of hours. At around seven, he'd gotten sick of it and headed straight to the warehouse, hoping that a cup of good coffee would help.

Eames heard Arthur's light footsteps as he stirred the sugar into his coffee. He would normally have moved over just to needle Arthur, but while Arthur was known to keep late nights, he rarely came in early. Eames' mind flashed back to Arthur's wistful look at the piano yesterday and gave him pause.

He grinned when Arthur seated himself in front of the piano and raised the lid, proving his suspicions correct. Arthur might have asked for "specificity", if it was the rhythmic tapping of his fingers, or the tune on his imaginary keyboard, but Eames would not have had an answer. Eames put little things together to understand people. It was what made him the forger he was- the ability to take in, and reproduce, an impression of the subject, as opposed to a replica. Arthur broke issues down into little pieces to understand them. It was what reassured him about working with professional, methodical Arthur- the knowledge  
that every specific detail would be accounted for by the point man. Arthur's job was to make sure that things didn't happen, a quality he only appreciated in jobs where chemists took off halfway and escape vehicles were delayed.

Eames positioned himself against the door, taking a position that afforded him a secret view of Arthur. It wasn't a perfect view- he could only see Arthur's back, as well as the elegant curve his white sleeve formed against the gleam of the piano surface. Despite that, Eames fancied that he was able to reconstruct Arthur's furrowed eyebrows and narrowed lips from the tension in his shoulder muscles as he paused halfway through his scales. The amused smile on his face flickered- he shouldn't have been there, it was Arthur's private space- before it grew sneaky; he was a criminal, he made his living by sneaking around.

Waltzes and nursery rhymes, it wasn't. The first chord hung solemnly in the air, a lone soldier's salute. Now, Eames was by no means a musical expert, but if these dull, plodding chords were Arthur's entertainment, he really needed to lighten up. But something felt strange. The chords were becoming more frequent, the contingent slowly but inexorably gathering. Eames' previous thought was forgotten as he felt the tension build up in the air. Soldiers all lined up before the final charge- no, it reminded Eames of a photograph taken right before the tsunami had struck an Indonesian island- the sea drawn back, leaving a vast expanse of the shore smooth and eerily calm.

Then the wave came in. Arthur's right hand pushed chords inexorably up the melodic register of the piano while his left hand danced a tremolo, governing the rhythm of the wave. Just when Eames thought the worst was over, again came the next crash, and another until it seemed that even rocks would be pulverized by these waves. That was why Arthur was a legendary point man, then- he gathered every sliver of data slowly, methodically, and organized them within his head such that what emerged was a torrent of backup plan upon backup plan.

Arthur moved his wrist in a fluid gesture, and the waves were no longer crashing upon the shore, but lapping at his feet. The landscape was still chilly and gray, but much calmer, like Arthur's reflexive scowl when Eames accidentally-on-purpose grazed Arthur's shoulder as he pulled his luggage away at airport. It was the whisper of text messages sent across continents as they traded job offers and the occasional innuendo-laced barb. More precisely, Eames would send an innuendo-laced comment, and Arthur would send a barb. Eames reckoned that the oceans would run dry before Arthur would deign to return the innuendo.

Eames felt a sense of deja vu as he watched the tide, no, the ocean that was Arthur. He'd been a bodyguard at the house of the forgery target, watching as the target told the mark that it was his passion for sailing, that blend of power and subtlety, that led him to take a course in ocean dynamics. "Don't all that equations ruin the fun?" the mark had scoffed to his nephew. Eames had initially agreed with the mark. In a flash of empathy, he understood: a new perspective could only add to the sense of wonder.

The slow chords returned for a third time. Eames shifted his weight to one foot, and gave a small kick to get the aches out. It hastily landed on the ground as the next wave swept in, much sooner than expected. The expected follow-up was elegant as before, yet it seemed slowed, as if by regret, or by the fact that this piece was only human, and nowhere near as boundless as the ocean.

It was coming to an end, Eames knew, as he crept towards the hallway. It was Arthur polishing the last metre of the PASIV cable, snapping the latch of the case shut. As the concluding chords played, he put his smirk in place, and stepped in front of the piano, anticipating the shock on Arthur's face. To his surprise, Eames saw the look of shock in the eyes of his reflection as Arthur drolly played the famous "da da da dum" of Beethoven's 5th, a matching smirk on his face.

"Bravo, darling!" Eames smiled, applauding slowly, so that the echo of each clap sounded separately. "What piece of heavenly ambrosia did I have the pleasure of savoring?"

"Ambrosia refers to food, Eames, not music." Arthur retorted, rolling his eyes.

"Ah, but did Shakespeare not call music the food of love?" Eames shot back with a winning smile. "Don't keep me in suspense any longer, darling."

"Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata. You know, the guy who wrote 'da da da dum'," Arthur snarked, in clear response to Eames' "darling".

"Your condescension wounds me," Eames declared, miming a stab at his heart. He was rewarded by an amused smile on Arthur's face.

"Only your ego, I think, which could do with some puncturing," Arthur returned, making to stand.

"Wait!" Eames called out, as his curiosity won over the desire to have the last word. Arthur stopped draping the cloth over the keys and turned to face him. "Will you play me a song?"

Arthur gave Eames a suspicious look. "Please?" Eames met Arthur's gaze, pulling out a puppy-dog look.

Arthur thought for a moment before a slight grin touched his face.

"Alright, something more suited to your cultural capacity then." Arthur said, beginning to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Eames opened his mouth to protest, but Arthur held up a hand before he could say anything. The music changed from the children's theme to flourishes in the melody, and then to a seemingly unrelated variation. It was Eames in his forgeries, changing from a baseball-playing boy to background businessman to busty blonde. Ariadne had once remarked that Eames' forgeries fooled everyone but Arthur.

"Proof of your undying affection for me, darling," Eames had laughed in reply.

"You would know, too, if a projection kept leering seductively at you," Arthur had replied, composed as always.

From where his chin was resting on the top of the piano, Eames had a full view of Arthur, fully immersed in the piece. Eames was struck by how peaceful he looked. He found himself wishing that he could see more of this side of Arthur, to watch what he did in the weeks and months when they had to lie low between jobs.

"Doesn't sound like the kind of piece you'd compose, though," Eames remarked in the silence after the last note, before Arthur could leave.

Arthur raised an eyebrow, curious. "So what would I compose, pray tell?"

Eames paused, as he framed his words. "Something complex," he decided. "Something that has layer after layer, like a song within a song."

"A fugue?" Arthur wondered out loud as he began to play, the melody winding in and out of the left hand.

"Yes, definitely," Eames agreed, smiling. "Something befitting that convoluted mind of yours."

Eames was rewarded by the matching smile that grew on Arthur's face, a glimpse of the sun through a shroud of storm clouds.


End file.
